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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No... 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 



What is Worth While Series, 



AFTER COLLEGE, WHAT? For Girls. By Mrs. 

Helen E. Starrett. 
ART OF LIVING (THE). By F. Emory Lyon. 
BLESSING OF CHEERFULNESS (THE). By Rev. 

J. R. Miller, D.D. 
BY THE STILL WATERS. By Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D. 
CHILDREN'S WING (THE). By Elizabeth Glover. 
CHRIST-FILLED LIFE (THE). By C. C. Hall, D.D. 
CONFLICTING DUTIES. By E. S. Elliott. 
CULTURE AND REFORM. By Anna R. Brown, Ph.D. 
DO WE BELIEVE IT? By E. S. Elliott. 
EXPECTATION CORNER. By E. S. Elliott. 
FAMILY MANNERS. By Elizabeth Glover. 
GENTLE HEART (A). By the Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D. 
GIRLS : Faults and Ideals. By Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D. 
GIVING WHAT WE HAVE. By Anna R. Brown, Ph.D. 
GOLDEN RULE IN BUSINESS. By Rev. C. F. Dole. 
HAPPY LIFE (THE). By Charles W. Eliott, LL.D. 
HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. T.DeWittTalmage,D.D. 
J. COLE. By Emma Gellibrand. 

JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER. By Hesba Stretton. 
KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. By John Ruskin. 
LADDIE. By the author of " Miss Toosey's Mission." 
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
MASTER AND MAN. By Count Tolstoi. 
MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION. By the author of " Laddie." 
PATHS OF DUTY (THE). By Dean Farrar. 
REAL HAPPENINGS. By Mrs. Mary B. Claflin. 
SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. By Rev. J. R. 

Miller, D.D. 
SELF-CULTURE. By Wm. E. Channing, D.D. 
SHIPS AND HAVENS. By Rev. Henry Van Dyke, D.D. 
STILLNESS AND SERVICE. By E. S. Elliott. 
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. By Matthew Arnold. 
TALKS ABOUT A FINE ART. By Elizabeth Glover. 
TELL JESUS. By Anna Shipton. 
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. By E. S. Elliott. 
TRUE WOMANHOOD. Bv W. Cunningham, D.D. 
TWO PILGRIMS (THE). By Count Lvof N. Tolstoi'. 
VICTORY OF OUR FAITH. By Anna R. Brown, Ph.D. 
WHAT IS WORTH WHILE? By Anna R. Brown, Ph.D. 
WHAT MEN LIVE BY. By Count Lvof N. Tolstoi'. 
WHEN THE KING COMES TO HIS OWN. By E. 

S. Elliott. 
WHEREFORE, O GOD ? By the Rev. C. B. Herbert. 
WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO. By L. 

N. Tolstoi. 
YOUNG MEN : Faults and Ideals. Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D. 



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Heavenly Recognition 



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BY 

THE EEV. T. DEWITT TALMAGE, D.D. 

Editor of The Christian Herald 



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Copyright, 1897, 
By Louis Klopsch. 

Copyright, 1897, 
By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 




C. J. Petebs & Son, Typographers, 
Boston. 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 



"I shall go to him." — 2 Sam. xii. 23. 



There is a very sick child in the abode of 
David the king. Disease, which stalks up the 
dark lane of the poor, and puts its smothering 
hand on lip and nostril of the wan and wasted, 
also mounts the palace stairs, and bending over 
the pillow, blows into the face of a young 
prince the frosts of pain and death. Tears are 
wine to the King of Terrors. Alas for David 
the king ! He can neither sleep nor eat, and 
lies prostrate on his face, weeping and wailing 
until the palace rings with the outcry of woe. 

What are courtly attendants, or victorious 
armies, or conquered provinces, under such cir- 
cumstances? What to any parent is all splen- 

5 



6 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

did surrounding when his child is sick ? Seven 
days have passed on. There, in that great 
house, two eyelids are gently closed, two little 
hands folded, two little feet quiet, one heart 
still. The servants come to bear the tidings 
to the king, but they cannot make up their 
minds to tell him, and they stand at the door 
whispering about the matter; and David hears 
them, and he looks up and says to them, "Is 
the child dead?" — " Yes ; he is dead." David 
rouses himself up, washes himself, puts on new 
apparel, and sits down to food. What power 
hushed that tempest? What strength was it 
that lifted up that king whom grief had de- 
throned ? Oh, it was the thought that he 
would come again into the possession of that 
darling child. No grave-digger's spade could 
hide him. The wintry blasts of death could 
not put out the bright light. There would be 
a forge somewhere that with silver hammer 
would weld the broken links. In a city where 
the hoofs of the pale horse never strike the 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 7 

pavement, he would clasp his lost treasure. 
He wipes away the tears from his eyes, and 
he clears the choking grief from his throat, 
and exclaims, "I shall go to him." 

Was David right, or wrong? If we part on 
earth, shall we meet again in the next world? 
"Well," says some one, "that seems to be an 
impossibility. Heaven is so large a place we 
never could find our kindred there." Going 
into some city, without having appointed a 
time and place for meeting, you might wander 
around for weeks and for months, and perhaps 
for years, and never see each other ; and heaven 
is vaster than all earthly cities together, and 
how are you going to find your departed friend 
in that country ? It is so vast a realm. John 
went up on one mountain of inspiration, and 
he looked off upon the multitude, and he said, 
"Thousands of thousands." Then he came 
upon a greater altitude of inspiration, and 
looked off upon it again, and he said, " Ten 
thousand times ten thousand," And then he 



8 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

came on a higher mount of inspiration, and 
looked off again, and he said, " A hundred and 
forty and four thousand and thousands of thou- 
sands." And he came on a still greater height 
of inspiration, and he looked off again, and ex- 
claimed, "A great multitude that no man can 
number." 

Now, I ask, how are you going to find your 
friends in such a throng as that? Is not this 
idea we have been entertaining after all a fal- 
sity? Is this doctrine of future recognition of 
friends in heaven a guess, a myth, a whim, or 
is it a granitic foundation upon which the soul 
pierced of all ages may build a glorious hope ? 
Intense question ! Every heart in this audience 
throbs right into it. There is in every soul 
here the tomb of at least one dead. Tremen- 
dous question ! It makes the lip quiver, and 
the cheek flush, and the entire nature thrill. 
Shall we know each other there ? I get letters 
almost every month asking me to discuss this 
subject. I get a letter in a bold, scholarly 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 9 

hand, on gilt-edged paper, asking me to dis- 
cuss this question; and I say, "Ah! that is a 
curious man, and he wants a curious question 
solved." But I get another letter. It is writ- 
ten with a trembling hand, and on what seems 
to be a torn-out leaf of a book, and there and 
here is the mark of a tear ; and I say, " Oh, 
that is a broken heart, and it wants to be com- 
forted." 

The object of this sermon is to take this 
theory out of the region of surmise and spec- 
ulation into the region of positive certainty. 
People say, "It would be very pleasant if 
that doctrine were true. I hope it may be 
true. Perhaps it is true. I wish it were true." 
But I believe that I can bring an accumula- 
tion of argument to bear upon this matter 
which will prove the doctrine of future rec- 
ognition as plainly as that there is any heaven 
at all, and that the kiss of reunion at the 
celestial gate will be as certain as the dying 
kiss at the door of the sepulchre. 



10 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

Now, when you are going to build a ship 
you must get the right kind of timber. You 
lay the keel, and make the framework of the 
very best materials, the keelson, stanchions, 
plank-shear, counter-timber, knees, transoms, all 
iron or solid oak. You may build a ship of 
lighter material; but when the cyclone comes 
on, it will go down. Now, we may have a 
great many beautiful theories about the future 
world built out of our own fancy, and they 
may do very well as long as we have smooth 
sailing in the world ; but when the storms of 
sorrow come upon us, and the hurricane of 
death, we shall be swamped — we shall be foun- 
dered. We want a theory built out of God's 
eternal word. The doctrine of future recog- 
nition is not so often positively stated in the 
Word of God as implied; and you know, my 
friends, that that is, after all, the strongest 
mode of affirmation. Your friend travels in 
foreign lands. He comes home. He does not 
begin by arguing with you to prove that there 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 11 

are such places as London and Stockholm and 
Paris and Dresden and Berlin, but his conver- 
sation implies it. And so this Bible does not 
so positively state this theory as, all up and 
down its chapters, take it for granted. 

What does my text imply? "I shall go to 
him." What consolation would it be to David 
to go to his child if he would not know him ? 
Would David have been allowed to record this 
anticipation for the inspection of all ages if 
it were a groundless anticipation ? We read in 
the first book of the Bible, Abraham died and 
was gathered to his people. Jacob died and was 
gathered to his people. Moses died and was 
gathered to his people. What people? Why, 
their friends, their comrades, their old com- 
panions. Of course it means that. It cannot 
mean anything else. So in the very begin- 
ning of the Bible four times that is taken 
for granted. The whole New Testament is an 
arbor over which this doctrine creeps like a 
luxuriant vine full of the purple clusters of 



12 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

consolation. James, John, and Peter followed 
Christ into the mountain. A light falls from 
heaven on that mountain, and lifts it into the 
glories of the celestial. Christ's garments 
glow, and his face shines like the sun. The 
door of heaven swings open. Two spirits 
come down and alight on that mountain. 
The disciples look at them, and recognize 
them as Moses and Elias. Now, if those dis- 
ciples standing on the earth could recognize 
these two spirits who had been for years in 
heaven, do you tell me that we, with our 
heavenly eyesight, will not be able to recog- 
nize those who have gone out from among 
us only five, ten, twenty, thirty years ago? 

The Bible indicates over and over again 
that the angels know each other; and then 
the Bible says that we are to be higher than 
the angels ; and if the angels have the power 
of recognition, shall not we, who are to be 
higher than they in the next realm, have as 
good eyesight and as good capacity? What 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 13 

did Christ mean, in his conversation with 
Mary and Martha, when he said, " Thy brother 
shall rise again?" It was as much as to say, 
"Don't cry. Don't wear yourselves out with 
this trouble. You will see him again. Thy 
brother shall rise again." 

The Bible describes heaven as a great home 
circle. Well, now, that would be a very queer 
home circle where the members did not know 
each other. The Bible describes death as a 
sleep. If we know each other before we go 
to sleep, shall we not know each other after 
we wake up ? Oh, yes ! We shall know each 
other a great deal better then than now ; " for 
now," says the apostle, " we see through a 
glass darkly, but then face to face." It will 
be my purified, enthroned, and glorified body 
gazing on your purified, enthroned, and glori- 
fied body. 

Now, I demand, if you believe the Bible, 
that you take this theory of future recognition 
out of the realm of speculation and surmise into 



14 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

the region of positive certainty, and no more 
keep saying, " I hope it is so; I have an idea it 
is so; I guess it is so." Be able to say, with 
all the concentrated energy of body, mind, and 
soul, " I know it is so ! " 

There are, in addition to these Bible argu- 
ments, other reasons why I accept this theory. 
In the first place, because the rejection of it 
implies the entire obliteration of our memory. 
Can it be possible that we shall forget forever 
those with whose walk, look, manner, we have 
been so long familiar? Will death come, and 
with a sharp, keen blade hew away this faculty 
of memory ? Abraham said to Dives, " Son, 
remember." If the exiled and the lost remem- 
ber, will not the enthroned remember ? 

You know very well that our joy in any 
circumstance is augmented by the companion- 
ship of our friends. We cannot see a picture 
with less than four eyes, or hear a song with 
less than four ears. We want some one beside 
us with whom to exchange glances and sym- 



s 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 15 

pathies ; and I suppose the joy of heaven is to 
be augmented by the fact that we are to have 
our friends with us when there rise before us 
the thrones of the blessed, and when there 
surges up in our ear the jubilate of the saved. 
Heaven is not a contraction ; it is an expan- 
sion. If I know you here, I shall know you 
better there. Here I see you with only two 
eyes, but there the soul shall have a million 
eyes. It will be immortality gazing on im- 
mortality ; ransomed spirit in colloquy with 
ransomed spirit ; victor beside victor. When 
John Evans, the Scotch minister, was seated 
in his study, his wife came in and said to him, 
" My dear, do you think we shall know each 
other in heaven ? " He turned to her and 
said, " My dear, do you think we shall be bigger 
fools in heaven than we are here ? " 

Again, I accept this doctrine of future rec- 
ognition because the world's expectancy af- 
firms it. In all lands and ages this theory is 
received. What form of religion planted it? 



16 HEAVENLY BECOGNITION. 

No form of religion, for it is received under 
all forms of religion. Then, I argue, a senti- 
ment, a feeling, an anticipation, universally 
planted, must have been God-implanted; and 
if God-implanted, it is rightfully implanted. 
Socrates writes, "Who would not part with a 
great deal to purchase a meeting with Orpheus 
and Homer? If it be true that this is to be 
the consequence of death, I could even be able 
to die often." 

Among the Danes, when a master dies his 
servant sometimes slays himself that he may 
serve the master in the future world. Cicero, 
living before Christ's coming, said, " Oh, glori- 
ous day, when I shall retire from this low and 
sordid scene to associate with the divine as- 
semblage of departed spirits, and not only 
with the one I have just mentioned, but with 
my dear Cato, the best of sons, and most 
faithful of men ! If I seemed to bear his 
death with fortitude, it was by no means that 
I did not most sensibly feel the loss I had 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 17 

sustained. It was because I was supported 
by the consoling reflection that we could not 
long be separated." 

The Norwegian believes it. The Indian 
believes it. The Greenlander believes it. 
The Swiss believe it. The Turks believe it. 
Under every sky, by every river, in every 
zone, the theory is adopted ; and so, I say, a 
principle universally implanted must be God- 
implanted, and hence, a right belief. The 
argument is irresistible. 

Again, I adopt this theory because there 
are features of moral temperament and fea- 
tures of the soul that will distinguish us for- 
ever. How do we know each other in this 
world? Is it merely by the color of the eye, 
or the length of the hair, or the facial pro- 
portions ? Oh, no ! It is by the disposition 
as well, by natural affinity, using the word 
in the very best sense and not in the bad 
sense ; and if in the dust our body should 
perish, and lie there forever, and there should 



18 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

be no resurrection, still the soul has enough 
features and the disposition has enough fea- 
tures to make us distinguishable. I can 
understand how in sickness a man will be- 
come so delirious that he will not know his 
own friends; but shall we be blasted with 
such insufferable idiocy that, standing beside 
our best friends for all eternity, we shall 
never guess who they are? 

Again, I think that one reason why we 
ought to accept this doctrine is because we 
never in this world have an opportunity to 
give thanks to those to whom we are spirit- 
ually indebted. The joy of heaven, we are 
told, is to be inaugurated by a review of life's 
work. These Christian men and women who 
have been toiling for Christ, have they seen 
the full result of their work ? Oh, no ! 

In the church at Somerville, N. J., John 
Vredenburgh preached for very many years. 
He felt that his ministry was a failure, 
although he was a faithful minister preach- 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 19 

ing the gospel all the time. He died, and 
died amid discouragements, and went home 
to God; for no one ever doubted that John 
Vredenburgh was a good Christian minister. 
A little while after his death, there came 
a great awakening in Somerville ; and one 
Sabbath two hundred souls stood up at 
the Christian altar espousing the cause of 
Christ, among them my own father and 
mother. And what was peculiar in regard 
to nearly all of those two hundred souls was 
that they dated their religious impressions 
from the ministry of John Vredenburgh. 
Will that good Christian man before the 
throne of God never meet those souls brought 
to Christ through his instrumentality? Oh, 
of course he will know them ! I remember 
one sabbath afternoon, borne down with the 
sense of my sins, and knowing not God, I took 
up Doddridge's "Rise and Progress." Oh, 
what a dark afternoon it was ! and I read the 
chapters, and I read the prayers, and I tried 



20 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

to make the prayers my own. Oh ! I must 
see Philip Doddridge. A glorious old book 
he wrote ! It is out of fashion now. 

There is a mother before the throne of God. 
You say her joy is full. Is it? You say 
there can be no augmentation of it. Cannot 
there be? Her son was a wanderer and a 
vagabond on the earth when that good mother 
died. He broke her old heart. She died leav- 
ing him in the wilderness of sin. She is before 
the throne of God now. Years pass, and that 
son repents of his crimes, and gives his heart 
to God, and becomes a useful Christian, and 
dies, and enters the gates of heaven. You tell 
me that that mother's joy cannot be aug- 
mented. Let them confront each other, the 
son and the mother. " Oh ! " she says to the 
angels of God, "rejoice with me! The dead 
is alive again, and the lost is found. Hallelu- 
jah! I never expected to see this lost one 
come back." 

I see a soul entering heaven at last, with 



HEAVENLY BECOGNITIOJST. 21 

covered face at the idea that it has aone so 
little for Christ, and feeling borne down with 
unworthiness ; and it says to itself, " I have no 
right to be here." A voice from a throne says, 
" Oh, you forget that Sunday-school class you 
invited to Christ! I was one of them." And 
another voice says, " You forget that poor man 
to whom you gave a loaf of bread, and told of 
the heavenly bread. I was that man." And 
another says, " You forget that sick one to 
whom you gave medicine for the body and 
the soul. I was that one." And then Christ, 
from a throne overtopping all the rest, will 
say, " Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least 
of these, ye did it to me." And then the ser- 
aphs will take their harps from the side of 
the throne, and cry, " What song shall it be ? " 
And Christ, bending over the harpers, shall 
say, " It shall be the Harvest Home ! " 

One more reason why I am disposed to ac- 
cept this doctrine of future recognition is that 
so many in their last hour on earth have con- 



22 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

firmed this theory. I speak not of persons who 
have been delirious in their last moment, and 
knew not what they were about, but of persons 
who died in calmness and placidity, and who 
were not naturally superstitious. Often the 
glories of heaven have struck the dying pillow, 
and the departing man has said he saw and 
heard those who had gone away from him. 
How often it is in the dying moments parents 
see their departed children, and children see 
their departed parents. I came down to the 
banks of the Mohawk River. It was evening, 
and I wanted to go over the river, and so I 
waved my hat and shouted; and after awhile 
I saw some one waving on the opposite bank, 
and I heard him shout, and the boat came 
across, and I got in and was transported. And 
so I suppose it will be in the evening of our 
life. We shall come down to the river of 
death, and give a signal to our friends on the 
other shore; and they will give a signal back 
to us, and the boat comes, and our departed 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 23 

kindred are the oarsmen, the fires of the set- 
ting day tingeing the tops of the paddles. 

Oh! have you never sat by such a death- 
bed ? In that hour you hear the departing soul 
cry, "Hark! look!" You harkened, and you 
looked. A little child, pining away because of 
the death of its mother, getting weaker and 
weaker every day, was taken into the room 
where hung the picture of her mother. She 
seemed to enjoy looking at it ; and then she was 
taken away, and after awhile died. In the last 
moment that wan and wasted little one lifted 
her hands, while her face lighted up with the 
glory of the next world, and cried out, 
" Mother ! ' : Do you tell me she did not see 
her mother? She did. So in my first settle- 
ment at Belleville a plain man said to me, 
" What do you think I heard last night ? I 
was in the room where one of my neighbors 
was dying. He was a good man, and he said 
he heard the angels of God singing before the 
throne. I haven't much poetry about me ; but 



24 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

I listened, and I heard them too." Said I, "I 
have no doubt of it." Why, we are to be taken 
up to heaven at last by ministering spirits. 
Who are they to be ? Souls that went up 
from Madras, or Antioch, or Jerusalem ? Oh, 
no ! our glorified kindred are going to troop 
around us. 

Heaven is not a stately, formal place, as I 
sometimes hear it described, a very frigidity of 
splendor, where people stand on cold formal- 
ities, and go around about with heavy crowns 
of gold on their heads. No, that is not my 
idea of heaven. My idea of heaven is more 
like this: You are seated in the evening-tide 
by the fireplace, your whole family there, or 
nearly all of them there. While you are seated 
talking and enjoying the evening hour, there 
is a knock at the door ; and the door opens, and 
there comes in a brother that has been long 
absent. He has been absent, for years you 
have not seen him ; and no sooner do you make 
up your mind that it is certainly he, than you 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 25 

leap up, and the question is, who shall give him 
the first embrace. That is my idea of heaven, 
— a great home circle where they are waiting 
for us. Oh ! will you not know your mother's 
voice there ? She who always called you by 
your first name long after others had given 
you the formal " Mister " ? You were never 
anything but James, or John, or George, or 
Thomas, or Mary, or Florence, to her. Will 
you not know your child's voice ? She of the 
bright eye, and the ruddy cheek, and the quick 
step, who came in from play and flung herself 
into your lap a very shower of mirth and 
beauty? Why, the picture is graven in your 
soul. It cannot wear out. If that little one 
should stand on the other side of some heav- 
enly hill and call to you, you would hear her 
voice above the burst of heaven's great orches- 
tra. Know it ! You could not help but know 
it. 

O heaven ! sweet heaven ! You do not spell 
heaven as you used to spell it, — h-e-a-v-e-n, 



26 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

heaven. But now when you want to spell that 
word you place side by side the faces of the 
loved ones who are gone ; and in that irradia- 
tion of light, and love, and beauty, and joy, 
you spell it out as never before in songs and 
hallelujahs. Oh, ye whose hearts are down 
under the sod of the cemetery, cheer up at 
the thought of this reunion ! Oh, how much 
you will have to tell them when once you meet 
them! 

How much you have been through since you 
saw them last ! On the shining shore you will 
talk it all over. The heartaches, the loneli- 
ness, the sleepless nights. The weeping until 
you had no more power to weep, because the 
heart was withered and dried up. Story of 
vacant chair and empty cradle, and little shoe 
only half worn out, never to be worn again, 
just the shape of the foot that once pressed 
it. And dreams when you thought that the 
departed had come back again, and the room 
seemed bright with their faces, and you started 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 27 

up to greet them ; and in the effort the dream 
broke, and you found yourself standing amid- 
room in the midnight — alone. Talking it all 
over, and then, hand in hand, walking up and 
down in the light. No sorrow, no tears, no 
death. O heaven! beautiful heaven! Heaven 
where our friends are. Heaven where we ex- 
pect to be. 

Oh, how they bound in these spirits before 
the throne ! Some shout with gladness. Some 
break forth into uncontrollable weeping for 
joy. Some stand speechless in their shock of 
delight. They sing. They quiver with exces- 
sive gladness. They gaze on the temples, on 
the palaces, on the waters, on each other. 
They weave their joy into garlands, they 
spring it into triumphal arches, they strike on 
timbrels ; and then all the loved ones gather 
in a great circle around the throne of God, 
— fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and 
daughters, lovers and friends, hand to hand 
around about the throne, — the circle, hand to 



28 HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 

hand, joy to joy, jubilee to jubilee, victory to 
victory, " till the day break, and the shadows 
flee away. Turn, my beloved, and be like a 
roe or a young hart upon the mountains of 
Bether." 

Oh, how different it is on earth from the 
way it is in heaven when a Christian dies ! 
We say, " Close his eyes." In heaven they 
say, " Give him a palm." On earth we say, 
" Let him down in the ground." In heaven 
they say, " Hoist him on a throne." On earth 
it is, " Farewell, farewell." In heaven it is, 
"Welcome, welcome." And so I see a Chris- 
tian soul coming down to the river of death, 
and he steps into the river, and the water 
comes up to his ankle. He says, " Lord Jesus, 
is this death?" "No," says Christ; "this is 
not death." And he wades still deeper down 
into the waters until the flood comes to the 
knee; and he says, "Lord Jesus, tell me, tell 
me, is this death?" And Christ says, "No, 
no; this is not death." And he wades still 



HEAVENLY RECOGNITION. 29 

farther down until the wave comes to the 
girdle ; and the soul says, " Lord Jesus, is this 
death?" "No," says Christ; "this is not." 
And deeper in wades the soul till the billow 
strikes the lip, and the departing one cries, 
"Lord Jesus, is this death?" "No," says 
Christ; "this is not." But when Christ had 
lifted this soul on a throne of glory, and all 
the pomp and joy of heaven came surging 
to its feet, then Christ said, "This, oh trans- 
ported soul! this is death! " 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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